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H. is describing the Babylonian plain proper, i. e. the southern part of Mesopotamia; at the present time the Euphrates and the Tigris unite in the Shat-El-Arab, but originally they reached the sea separately. ὕεται. Rain, which is abundant in Assyria proper, falls in Babylonia chiefly in the winter and spring, and then as a rule not in large quantities. Willcocks' table (Irrigation of Mesopotamia, 1910, p. 68) shows that from May to October the land is practically rainless, in the other six months the rainfall is about eight inches, fairly evenly distributed. So far as rain is concerned the country is not a desert like Egypt, but rather a ‘steppe region capable of sustaining millions of sheep’ (p. 10). Grote (iii. 295) lays stress on the accuracy of H. in contrasting the light rains here with practically rainless Upper Egypt (iii. 10 n.). H. is quite right in saying that while the scanty spring rain (τοῦτο) ‘causes the corn to sprout, the crop ripens from irrigation’. His description of this is accurate, if we remember that he is contrasting the natural (αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ) Nile flood with the artificial Babylonian system. The present Euphrates, however, now that the canals are gone, floods its banks from March to July, when the Armenian snows melt. κηλωνηίοισι, ‘by swipes worked by hand’ (cf. vi. 119. 3), i. e. the shadoufs which are still used in Mesopotamia and Egypt (cf. Maspero, i. 764, and 340 for illustrations). Colonel Chesney (Survey of Tig. and Euph. 1850, ii. 653) describes it as a wooden lever, 13-15 feet long, revolving on a post 3-4 feet high with a bucket at the end, balanced when full by a weight at the other end. From the top of the bank the water was distributed over the fields in artificial channels.
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